Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Yi Wang, Jin Wei
China

Design Background

Gulao waterfront village as the last ecological area which has traditional characteristics in Pearl River Delta of China has another reputation named “Southern Venice”. With the development of population of the local villagers, Gulao waterfront village is facing a severe challenge between its expansion and the scarcity of land resource. It has abundant water resources in Southern China, and most of the villages are built near water. The settlement architecture in Gulao waterfront village are one unique as dots that are scattered across the whole village, which accounted for expansion limited. It is essential for us to help the last traditional waterfront village in Southern China in the role of designers as an attempt to solve the problem. Therefore, a skyscraper is designed as “Floating Waterfront Village”, capable of sustainable development.

In ancient times, waterfront villages in Southern China are located in low-lying areas, which is accounting for flood disasters, a serious threat to villagers’ life and productive activities. The local people dug deep ponds for breeding fish in some low-lying areas, according to local condition. The whole village was constructed of mulberry-dike-fishponds avoiding the depression of flood and creating ecological environment. Some villages were constructed on the piers, spreading across the waterfront area. Pier as land is linked to pond-protecting wall. Buildings are constructed on the piers as little as one household to as much as twenty households and also ancestral halls are constructed on them. Ponds separate different piers, thereby forming punctuate villages.

Design Conception

“Floating Waterfront Village” as a new kind of skyscrapers will be introduced to Gulao waterfront village, making the best use of original land of the village, by not destroying its skin texture. The height of skyscraper is more than 300 meters; it looks like a floating waterfront village or a bird paradise in the air from the ground. From the morphological point of view, the design inspiration is from the traditional big Banyan in Southern China, and mainly living and activity function are put on the small and large platforms. There are some small living platforms hung down around the top roof as “aerial roots”, which makes the skyscraper integrated into the whole environment. “Floating Waterfront Village” not only has practical function, but also set complex ecological energy saving, scenery viewing, science educating and art in one of the multiple experience. By the way, it establishes a showcase of waterfront village of green ecological and low carbon energy saving technology in the future.

The function of the skyscraper

“Floating Waterfront Village” has multiple identities. It is a village with living function in the air, also a climate observation station, or an agricultural research station, or a sightseeing platform. First of all, this skyscraper is a village for people’s living activities. Forming a waterfront village in Southern China is including lakes, ponds, wells, squares and the Banyan trees. Therefore, a huge platform is on the top of this skyscraper as the functions of activity and communication. Vertical supporting-skeleton is the water delivery system like a huge well; the water is taken out from the ponds to living areas. At the same time, different kinds of roofs have rainwater collection systems, replenishing water into ponds during the drought seasons. There are many Banyan trees planted on the platforms of the building, and the trees will be a certain scale after 3-5 years in Southern China, looking like a bird paradise. Secondly, the waterfront village belongs to the natural ecological zones, and a Banyan tree will be with luxuriant foliage covering 1 square meters, thousands of birds will be here. The climate observation station will be set in the skyscraper, also for the protection of the natural environment and rare species. Thirdly, there is an agricultural research station here to provide research and guidance the sustainable development of the waterfront village. Finally, the traditional village as an ecological area attracts thousands of visitors. The skyscraper not only releases such pressure, but also brings some economic income.

Even under the worst situation, even if it is supposed that Gulao waterfront village disappeared, the skyscraper was still meaningful. It will stand there not only as a “Floating Waterfront Village” but also an ironical monument, a piece of evidence witnessing the crime of the selfish human beings. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Bart Chompff, James Park
Austria

For centuries we have designed our buildings aligned to the sun. We aim to inverse this premise, by aligning the rays of the sun to our buildings.

With the advent of new technologies we believe the sun has the potential to play an even larger role in society than it does today, or has ever done before. Humanity has worshiped it, evolved with it, and organized its life around it. Our project aims to augment the utilization of sun’s energy on an architectural scale whereby the focus on capturing the sun’s energy goes beyond the mere application of photovoltaic cells upon surfaces. With this in mind, our design incorporates two available and proven processes of harvesting energy from the sun. Both of these processes operate by way of redirecting and thereby concentrating the rays of the sun towards a specific target but differ significantly in their output.

The first of our integrated concepts is Concentrated Solar Power (fig. 1). This is a system by which heliostats redirect and concentrate a large amount of thermal energy upon a small area which is transferred to a viscous substance which is in turn used to drive a steam turbine.

The second incorporated concept of energy harvesting is commonly referred to as Solar Thermal Cooling (fig. 2). It operates on a similar principle of focusing solar rays but alternatively uses the accumulated heat to fuel an absorption chiller, a device that transforms a hot substance into a cold one, which in turn may be used to cool the interior space of the building.

As previously indicated, both strategies utilize a methodology that operates on the principle of Forward Ray Tracing (fig. 3). Accordingly, arrays of heliostats are optimally positioned around the tower which redirect the sun’s rays as the earth completes its daily rotation. The tower’s deformed surfaces demarcate areas where Concentrated Solar Power and Solar Thermal Cooling are employed and are convex and concave respectively in accordance with the spatial requirements of the two technologies.

By harvesting more of the sun’s rays not only can we utilize more use of the sun’s latent energy but also fundamentally alter the relation between the sun and the architectural object. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Si Hoon Choi, Do In Kim, Tae Joon Jeong, Chang Han Lee, Seong Hyun Yoon
South Korea

The subway provides convenience to commuter during commute time as a transportation that is used by many people. However, because of high-rise buildings and city concentrated of population in the main cities even the convenient subway became uncomfortable in the time when many people use. We will rise the linear of the subway which connects essential area of city and the countryside into a upper part. It is because bicycle is the transportation which can be used during rush-hour rather than car or subway that has traffic jam and inconvenience. The Bicycle is an eco-friendly transportation that lessen carbon dioxide and also make people healthy. The government made ground drive way or bicycle road to give bicycle riders convenience but it is not really efficient in reality. The bicycle road is broken because of ground road system and the accident is increasing since the number of user in intersection of pedestrian and drive way. So we planned to make a bicycle road which connects vertical station of bicycle in the empty space above subway entrance.

The only bicycle vertical station is running with eco-friendly system. The electricity from Air-stack system, piezoelectric effect system, BIPV generates electricity to run the building. This vertical station and up-right highway would provide commuter an exclusive experience with awesome view and bicycle road without traffic jam. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Margaret Rew, Taylor Hewett, Karilyn Johannesen
United States

The People of the City have too long been subjected to the free plan: FAR, $PSF, the corridor, and, by extension, the vertical instrumentality of the service core—the tropes of modernism must be questioned, for they are rich with opportunity. We declare war on the open planes of Modernism.

We have bodies, we take up space. We do not need floor space; we need volume. We do not need free plans; we need free sections.

Rising real estate costs and geographic as well as political barriers to city growth have put vertical pressure on the City. We can no longer tolerate a sub-urban attitude towards space—in our periphery or in our metropolis. The spatial strategy of the suburban ranch house becomes a shoebox in the gleaming high rise. We suggest an equivalent to the townhouse – a typology that has long defined the healthy Urban center. Such a typology embeds residential units in a fabric of public circulation and program. We propose a new spatial paradigm: A City designed for volume.

Along with this new paradigm come attitudes of inclusion and hybridity. We recognize the layered nature of identity in the global city, in which we are all both citizens and strangers. This age-old attribute of the cosmopolitan center has been redefined in the contemporary global city by the unyielding forces of capitalism. The real estate and tourism industries vie for territory at the expense of the public. The resultant architecture reinforces the opposition between these two identities and has yet to address growing trends that contradict distinctions between resident and tourist, permanence and transience, familiar and alien.

This proposal subverts the current model of elevator core dependency in the mixed-use skyscraper by leveraging light and air voids as pathways for gondola-style vertical circulation. This network becomes an armature for pockets of public space and privatized public program. In this new public territory, citizen-spaces and stranger-spaces mutually benefit from their adjacencies and overlaps. The proposed spatial strategy maximizes connectivity and hybridity—proposing that these places that a citizen-stranger lives, works, and plays in should be defined first and foremost by the tenacity of their volume. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Rodrigo Carranca Hernandez
Mexico

Project Statement

Favelas, slums, hoovervilles or bidonvilles are informal settlements that lack property rights and provide below-average quality housing in agglomerations; they tend to lack basic infrastructure, urban services, social facilities and green areas. They are located in geographic areas with dangerous surroundings and / or extreme environments.

The existence of favelas has been known since the end of the XIX century; however, it was not until 1930 that they became an important part of the urbanization process in Brazil. Between 1941 and 1943, the country´s population grew significantly and the government did not know how to control this growth, they tried to develop various projects with urban purposes, but these never gave any results.

Steep streets, substandard housing, darkness, marginality, violence, insecurity, bad quality of life, disease, risk of being affected by natural disasters of all types and social and economic exclusion make its inhabitants seem like products creatures of the underworld. Overpopulation and exponential growth have created the perfect conditions to turn favelas into colonies of crime and drugs.

Project Purpose

Reinterpret the current concept of favelas inside a vertical city; control and plan the unmeasured growth of these settlements; provide a better quality of life for the inhabitants of favelas or of any similar informal settlement in the world by diminishing the risk of natural disasters, health and insecurity problems, violence and/or drug trafficking, by increasing access to better services and infrastructure and by eliminating existing economic and social contrasts.

Besides eliminating the existing contrasts, the main purpose of this project is to help inhabitants of favelas to be familiarized with the building and establish a relationship with it in which its functions and development adapt to the needs of the users, allowing them live in a space where their work, education, and health requirements are met. this project aims to increase the inhabitants’ economy, live up to the standards of any other city in brazil, offer public transportation and become a space where people can live freely and express their views without recurring to violence and/or crime.

The space where the favela was located will be reforested and used as a protected natural area.

Project Overview

An integral project with a parametric function based on a pattern from the theory of the “cellular automaton” by John Horton Conway in The Game of Life (1970), designed in three dimensions that can be expanded in a dynamic system based on the requirements, needs and number of users.

It is a self-sustainable building where climatic factors such as heat, humidity and rain are exploited to diminish the high costs of basic services. Thanks to the percentage of green areas located on the terraces and open spaces, water recollection is possible as well as harvesting produce for consumption or merchandising.

The project contemplates spaces for housing, health services, religious ceremonies or cults, public education, museums, forums, theatres and workshops for cultural activities, sport centers with the best equipment and a football stadium with great capacity, public and private offices, as well as large shopping centers, recreation sites, playgrounds and stores equipped with urban furniture. it has all the necessary facilities for energy and water to be stored and distributed for daily use.

The building is a conceptual proposal that works not only for favelas such as Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro, but that can be adapted to any similar vicinity, anywhere in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Nurzhanat Kenenov
Singapore

Water availability in Somalia is naturally climatic issue. With extremely low rainfall and much higher potential evaporation, the country is characterized as water-scarce. Only 30% of Somalis have access to safe water, leading to increased risk of food shortage, social conflict, stress to economic growth, and poor standards of living.

A stable supply of clean water can be achieved through implementation of engineering and architectural concepts. A self-sustaining network of aqueducts linking cities will solve issues arising from water scarcity. These aqueducts will supply clean water and create water bodies next to main cities, where water to be used by local families and businesses.

Somalia is located next to Indian Ocean, with its salt water not suitable for consumption. The high evaporation rate from the hot climate is a key factor to issue of water scarcity in Somalia, but it can also contribute to its solution. Salt water from the ocean can be evaporated, separating the clean water from salt and other minerals. Sunlight will be used as the main energy supply to evaporate salty water. An aqueduct network consisting of towers will help to clean water as well to produce energy needed for clean water flow. The first and tallest tower to be located at shore of the ocean, close to capital of Somalia city of Muqdisho. The structure of each tower will hold a large trussed ring comprising magnifiers, which direct sunlight onto the front reinforced concrete and insulated wall with iron pipes. Magnifiers being at high level will not be affected by ground dusty winds and will need less maintenance. Each magnifier will be unique as it to direct sunlight to given part of the pipe for continuous heating. The lower end of the pipes will sit in a water compartment where water flows from the ocean. The bulk of light from the magnifiers will need to be directed to the lower ends of the pipes to achieve the highest temperature for water heating and evaporation. Evaporated water will pass through turbine generators to produce energy. Vapor free of salt to reach uppermost of tower where it will be cooled to liquid state by strong winds above the surface layer common for Somalia. The cooling part of tower will be incorporated with turbines to produce energy. Cooled water will be treated with necessary minerals will flow by gravity down to aqueduct network, passing though generators producing energy. Energy from the three types of generators will be stored and used for pumping clean water at aqueducts due to difference of ground levels. Aqueduct to transport clean water from Muqdisho Tower to next city of Afgooye, where it will be stored as artificial water body. The Afgooye Tower will use same concept as the Muqdisho Tower to clean water of dirt and dust and to produce enough energy to transport the water through an aqueduct to the next tower. The last tower to be city of Xuddur which is the most affected by water scarcity.

Water bodies formed at the base of each tower will be used for agriculture and aquaculture. This will not only alleviate the problem of food supply to Somalia, but will also boost economy as food can be exported to neighboring countries. Each tower will create work places comprising of staff necessary for control of vapor process and water production, as well as staff necessary for food production around the water bodies. This will improve the social status of Somali citizens. The water bodies can be treated as parks, providing water necessary for green space which would improve health of local population. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Yike Peng, Fan Wu, Youyi Wang
Hong Kong

In a potential future, Manhattan will embrace a neo-level of urbanization process. Lots of skyscrapers with glorious memories will be replaced by New Super-Skyscrapers which has much higher FAR and density. Rather than demolishing the former skyscrapers, we believe centralized preserving these skyscrapers full of delirious memory would be approved as meaningful as protecting Pantheon in Rome. It is a kind of retroactive represent for the forgotten lifestyle and collective unconsciousness. Skyscrapers in project will be still in use and be beheld by people, just like the Central Park.

When people walk into the museum tower of Manhattan skyscrapers the entrance ramp will lead people to each skyscrapers foundation. We believe that skyscrapers should be considered as the antiquities artwork which could view from bottle. After viewing the foundation, office workers will get into each tower to start their work and tourists will take the Annulus Lifting Platform to the top sightseeing plaza where tourists can enjoy the top view of skyscrapers and central park. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Jun Hao Ong
Malaysia

THE TOWER OF SANCTITY

Dating thousands of years ago, rock-cut architecture – the practice of creating a structure by carving it out of solid natural rock was used for many significant religious monuments, temples and tombs. The rock-hewn church of Lalibela in Ethopia, the 1,500-tonnes unfinished Obelisk of Aswan in Egypt and the elaborate sandstone-carved treasury of Petra in Jordan are some of the ancient wonders of rock-cut architecture still standing today. Why carve instead of build? The most fundamental and natural form of shelter to mankind is the cave, long been regarded as a place of sanctity. Hence, the sanctuary in religious structures, even free standing ones, retain the same cave-like feeling of sacredness, being small and dark with little natural light.

Blurring the lines between sculpture and architecture, stone age and new age, The Habitable Obelisk is a vertical shrine for new living and contemplating within a free-standing piece of rock-cut sandstone set in an urban environment.

THE LIVING ROCK : A SLICE OF NATURE

The Habitable Obelisk cannot be constructed ad-hoc, but rather requires to chart several stages progressively to finally reach a habitable stage. The formation of obelisk begins with the sustainable cut of a 200-metre high red sandstone rock from a stratified sandstone butte using advanced rock cutters and tunnel-boring technologies. These giant machineries are coupled with fundamental understandings of low-tech ancient rock-cutting techniques. In order to move the megalith, a monster crawler-transporter is used, the type of vehicle developed by NASA to move 3000-tonne rockets, while being inched along on tanklike treads on a special road surface coated with fine river rock to reduce friction. This arduous yet ceremonial procession of the ‘living rock’ is celebrated as it crosses the threshold between nature and man-made to finally find its new footing in a city block.

CARVING THE NEW CONSTRUCT

Once set in its new grounds, the carving stage commences. Without the need to follow the principles of a traditional bottoms-up column-slab construction, the obelisk can adopt a unique rock-cutting principle to carve out its habitable spaces. Using the biologically-motivated method of the Reaction-Diffusion algorithm, a process in which two or more chemicals diffuse at unequal rates over a surface and react with one another to form stable patterns such as spots and stripes (on animal skins), a three-dimensional carving principle is generated.

The carving stage is a marriage of skilled rock-artisans, instead of builders, together with a battalion of 7-axis robotic-carvers that cut, carve, etch, smoothen and polish the towering rock into habitable and detailed spaces. The formation of a stone-quarry simultaneously occurs to harvest cut-out rock blocks for other uses. Programmatically, the fluid and conjoined nature of the carved-out spaces allows for new forms of living and social interactions in the city, while offering endless connectivity and adaptation for its occupants.

THE URBAN QUARRY

The Habitable Obelisk doesn’t only challenge the notion of contemporary rock-cut architecture but also the life-cycle of building materials in today’s construction world. The obelisk is itself a natural source, a quarry that never stops giving.

By being homogenous, the obelisk creates a more specialized industry involved in rock-cut architecture versus an industry that fabricates various building components, each with its own detriment to the environment. As an urban quarry, once the obelisk reaches an uninhabitable state, the abandoned tower can be broken down into blocks and silica which can then be used to construct future buildings and infrastructures. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Gigih Nalendra, Nadia Vashti Lasrindy, Reza Arya Pahlevi
Indonesia

Background

Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is among the cities that have the highest average annual precipitation (average rainfall) in the world, the average is above 3000mm. Every year floods occur in Jakarta. Widespread flooding occurred in 1996, 2002, 2007, and the latest in 2012. Insufficient reservoir and lack of drainage is one of the causes that can cause flooding, therefore the city needs more of it to keep the excess water, but in reality, the cost of land is really high to make ground reservoir, especially in the city center where it is needed the most.

Concept

From all of those problems, we sought to turn it into an advantage. Our proposal is to use the top of a building as a top reservoir that can cover a large area for rain water catchment, and the fact that the building is tall; the potential energy is also higher due to its high position. Therefore, the energy from the amount of water that falls from the peak into waterfall can generates a massive hydropower to feed the energy needs of the building’s inhabitants.

Water Cycle

Hydropower regarded as the most efficient renewable energy, the existing technology of the hydropower has 90% efficiency, it can respond to quickly changing of the environment needs. Water cycle can be functioned as required by the occupants.

But then what can the building do if there is no rain?. Sun radiation in Indonesia and many countries lies in equator are intense and most of the times are overhead at the clear sky condition, therefore from harvesting the heat from the sun in the solar tube collector, the tube generates steam that can push back the fallen water up to the top reservoir.

The water cycle in the building also benefits the environment, irrigation and sanitary were flowed from top water reservoir to sky gardens, and in certain time the river can be purified, brought by natural pump (steam), river water pushed to top water reservoir and at the ends filtered and taken out to river.

Passive Sustainable Strategies

The building also has several passive sustainable strategies. Monsoon windows let the airflow through cantilevered floor even though rain showers the façade of the building. Single unit plan in the building with a large internal void were maintained to establish effective cross ventilation of airflow in the building. And due to intense solar heat at the equatorial area, the shape of the building resembled series of canopies that will help to maintain comfortable shades during the hottest time of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Choice
2015 Skyscraper Competition

Zhou Ping, Yang Dongqi, Xie Mingxuan, Chai Wenpu, Sun Wei, Yang Hui, Liu Chengming, Qi Shan, Deng Honghao
China

Strictly speaking, the blasting renewal of modern cities is not a scientific process but a experimental combination of technology and techniques. Modern theory still could not solve the problems in the blasting demolition like traffic dispersion, urban resource transportation and noise control. We need to summarize new rules from the massive blasting demolition practices, and try to explore new techniques.

With a reasonable imagination of modern demolition techniques and the possibilities 3d printing technology, we propose the possibility of future high-rises. The construction of new high-rises is based on the materials and location of the original buildings, and the memory of previous high-rises will be inherited.

The machine is fixed on the mobile stand gripping on the core tube for the stability during the demolition and printing process. The printing materials come from the recycle of the original high-rises. By collecting, separating and further processing the building debris from the cutter-head on the bottom of the machine, three basic printing materials are made: glass, concrete and metal. With different combination of these three materials, unlimited structure and architecture forms could be made to create more possibilities of the new high-rises on the top.

The nozzles on the top of the machine could cover the whole building plan area with radial movement and rotation. Based on the original structure of the core tube, the ratio and the structure forms of glass, concrete and metal are adjusted to reinforce the core tube for the structure stability of the new structure during the top-down printing process. Read the rest of this entry »